Report: Marvel Studios has reacquired the rights to Taskmaster

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Film rights are a complicated business already, but when it comes to comic books, they can get insanely tricky. Well, it sounds like all those twisty rights have apparently led a classic Marvel villain back home.

Heroic Hollywood and ComicBook.com are both reporting that the rights to supervillain (and sometimes anti-hero) Taskmaster are back at Marvel Studios. They were previously held by 20th Century Fox, though that is apparently no longer the case. The first inkling of the shakeup came from Deadpool director Tim Miller, who told Empire he’d have loved to include the character in his film:

“I’d love to see Deadpool fight Batman - no, I’m just kidding, that’s not even in the Marvel family! I’d love to see Deadpool go up against Taskmaster who’s another Marvel total f**kin’ badass. But if I was to stay inside the Fox family, I would like to see him fight X-23, the female Wolverine. The female clone of Wolverine.”

From there, they followed the rabbit hole a bit further to apparently confirm that the rights for Taskmaster had reverted back to Marvel, likely due to the fact that Taskmaster has never actually appeared in a Fox superhero film. No word on whether Marvel actually plans to use the character anytime soon, but with a gaggle of films and television shows always in different phases of development, it stands to reason he could surface at some point.

Taskmaster was first introduced in Avengers #195 in 1980, and has the ability to mimic the physical movements of those he watches. So he’s really good at fighting, and can also usually anticipate whatever an opponent might do next. That skill set could definitely make for some good fights on the big (or small) screen.

As for where he might pop up in the MCU? Taskmaster has connections to several different characters, and has popped up as a nemesis to a large part of Marvel’s roster over the years, including Ant-Man, Daredevil, The Punisher, Spider-Man and several others. So he could conceivably fit just about anywhere.